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13 August 2012

Well, the Olympics are over and although I was one of those converted cynics who became an unexpected sports devotee for two weeks, I'm sure my interest in running, cycling, rowing and the rest will ebb away. However, there is just one sport which I'll always voluntarily watch: Gymnastics.

What I didn't know when I first got hooked as a child watching the Olympic performances of Olga Korbut and Nadia Komǎneci was that modern gymnastics owes a lot to Germans. Two writers in particular were influential in making gymnastics an important and respected part of sporting education.

The elder of these, Johann Christoph Friedrich GutsMuths, wrote the first systematic guide to gymnastics, based on his own experience teaching at a progressive school. In his Gymnastik für die Jugend (1793; BL shelfmark C.105.a.12) he argues for a greater emphasis on physical training in education and describes specific exercises. Many – including running, jumping and swimming – would not be considered as gymnastics disciplines today, but GutsMuths also advocates vaulting, swinging and exercises on a beam.

If GutsMuths laid the foundations for a revival of gymnastics, the sport was expanded and popularised by Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, whose influence earned him the title of "Turnvater" – the father of gymnastics. He popularised the motto "frisch, fromm, fröhlich, frei" (a 19th-century English version of which forms the title of this post) to characterise the pleasures and virtues of physical exercise.

In 1816 Jahn and his assistant Ernst Eiselen published Deutsche Turnkunst (BL 785.f.32.). The exercises and apparatus they describe are more recognisably the ancestors of today's gymnastics, although the pommel horse is rather charmingly illustrated with a tail in imitation of a real horse, something that might surprise modern gymnasts! However, a book of illustrated exercises compiled by Eiselen in 1845 (BL 785.f.29) shows pommel horse (and other) exercises which would probably be recognised by my personal 2012 Olympic hero, Louis Smith and his colleagues.

As well as promoting gymnastics, Jahn was a passionate advocate of a unified, constitutional German state. Although his nationalistic writings were taken up enthusiastically by the Nazis in the 1930s, his aspirations seemed suspiciously liberal to the Prussian establishment of Jahn's own time, and he was imprisoned as a subversive for several years. Gymnastics, tainted by association, was officially banned in Prussia for two decades.

The ban was never fully enforced, but it led many of Jahn's supporters and fellow-gymnasts to emigrate. They took gymnastics with them, especially to the USA, but it was an enthusiast of a later generation, Ernst Georg Ravenstein, who formed the first gymnastics club in Britain in 1861.

In 1865 the club moved into a splendid purpose-built Gymnasium; the building still survives between King's Cross and St Pancras stations – a stone's throw from where I am writing this – although no longer as a gymnasium. The Times on 30 January 1865 reported that its opening ceremony on the previous Saturday had been "characterized by … cordiality and enthusiasm" and "prolonged till a late hour". Something else today's Olympic gymnasts might recognise from London's opening and closing ceremonies!

31 July 2012

With the London Olympics now in full swing, I've been thinking and reading about Germany's relationship with the Games in the course of the 20th Century. Of course much has been written about the 1936 "Nazi Olympics" (including by myself, on our "Sports and Society" webpages). But it occurred to me that this whole century of sporting history reflects Germany's wider political traumas and upheavals over the same period.

Germany, a major and respected power in 19th-century Europe, was part of the Olympics from the very first modern Games in 1896. In 1912 Berlin was chosen to host the 1916 Games. But a war caused partly by Germany's own expansionist ambitions prevented those Games from going ahead.

After the First World War the defeated Germany was condemned as chiefly responsible for the conflict and, despite having been reconstituted as a democratic republic, was banned from the 1920 and 1924 Games. Only in 1928 was Germany once more allowed to compete, but the IOC must have been impressed because three years later the 1936 Olympics were once again awarded to Berlin.

But by 1936 Germany was no longer a democracy. The Nazi dictatorship exploited the event's propaganda potential to the full and the Berlin Games passed into notoriety. The same regime had soon plunged Europe into another war and there would be no Games in 1940 or 1944.

There was no official ban on German participation at the first post-war Games in 1948, but the country was still under allied occupation and there was little international enthusiasm for a German team to be invited to London.

By 1952 Germany was formally divided into two states and for the next twenty years German involvement in the Olympics was inextricably linked with Cold War politics. Only West Germany (and, in 1952 only, the Saarland) was recognised by the IOC; western politicians were keen to avoid legitimising the Communist GDR by allowing it to compete in its own right.

Four years later both German states competed under their own flags and used their own anthems. The 1972 Games were held in Munich, which welcomed the world to a democratic and peaceful (West) Germany. But the Games would come to be defined not by peace and goodwill but by the deaths of eleven Israeli athletes in an attack by the "Black September" terrorist group.

Finally in 1992 a genuinely united German team took the Olympic stage again, and today Germany is just another Olympic competitor, at ease with itself and the world, and no longer exploiting or exploited by the forces of history. Following the success of the 2006 Football World Cup, perhaps one day a German Olympics will at last lay the ghosts of 1936 and 1972.

16 June 2010

After the first game of the German football teamat the current World Cup, there has been a lot of praise for the squad's playing style and efficiency. However, one important contribution to the "Germans'" success is not their disciplined approach and fitness, it's politics.

Let me explain this: quite a number of the players in this German team were actually born outside the country or their parents were not born in Deutschland. Some of the "foreign" players had their conflict of nationality eased by the introduction of new laws, coming into effect in 2000. These laws make it not only easier for German-born players to be German citizens, but also in same cases means that since then those born to non-German parents could opt for dual citizenship (something which was only allowed in very exceptional circumstances before 2000).

So, when you think of the following players who were born in Germany, appreciate that by law 11 years ago, some of them would not have been able and be allowed to play for the German team: Dennis Aogo (German mum, Nigerian dad), Serdar Taşçı (Turkish parents), Jérôme Boateng (German mum, Ghanaian dad), Sami Khedira (German mum, Tunsian dad), Mesut Özil (Turkish parents), Mario Gómez (German mum, Spanish dad).

Then there are those team members not born in Germany, but having parents who immigrated to Germany when they were relatively young: Piotr Trochowski (born in Tczew, Poland), Marko Marin (Bosanska Gradiška, Bosnia and Herzegovina), Lukas Podolski (Gliwice, Poland), Miroslav Klose (Kęzierzyn Koźle, Poland), and "Cacau", Claudemir Jeronimo Barretto (Santo André, Brazil).

So from 23 players in this World-Cup’s German squad 11 could have played for another country’s team! Also, most of the German-born players listed above, had to make a choice about their option to be German national after the new law came in to force. With the exception of Cacau, the remaining four players born outside Germany were probably part of broader tendencies in immigration to Germany for reasons of war (Bosnia and Herzegovina) or for economic benefits (Poland). The two players with Turkish parents and three footballers with Polish parents are, of course, also part of the biggest group of immigrants to Germany well before 2007, the time of the following statistics: 1.7 million Turkish citizens, and 384,808 Polish nationals. Statistics from 2005 are even more interesting: 91% of Germany’s population were German citizens, of which 10% have - what is nastily called – an "immigrant background". So, by the old principle of jus sanguinis, in 2005 one could have (maybe!) counted 19% of non-Germans in 2005. In comparison to England, here we had in 2007 87.89% of people being born in England, therefore making them English by jus soli.

I don't want to get into debates over immigration here but if the German team continues to play as well as last weekend, maybe one should not rule out increasing the pool of "English" players – though being an "alien" here myself, I might be slightly biased. Of course, you could just ignore this World Cup altogether and instead concentrate on the World Cup proper, later this year: the FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup, Germany, 13 July to 1 August 2010.